Monday, March 18, 2013

Obama library battle heats up

And the battle for President Obama's library appears to have boiled down two finalists: Chicago and Hawaii.

Universities and community groups in both places are busy lobbying the president's people for the facility that the contestants see as an economic and cultural boon.

"It is a tough choice, but it's not one that I've made yet," Obama told an interviewer last month.

In the meantime, the Associated Press reported:

"In December, top officials from the University of Chicago, where Obama once taught law, traveled to Dallas and met with archivists at The George W. Bush Presidential Library at Southern Methodist University. At the meeting was Susan Sher, first lady Michelle Obama's former chief of staff and longtime friend and now a senior adviser to the University of Chicago's president. ...

"In Honolulu, where the president was born, University of Hawaii officials have visited nearly all the 13 official presidential libraries to talk to officials involved in setting them up. An American studies professor, Robert Perkinson, is leading a statewide effort coordinated by the university, with support from Gov. Neil Abercrombie and other state and federal officials. The state Legislature has passed two resolutions urging Obama to pick Hawaii; one resolution calls it 'a matter of great state pride that President Obama is the first Hawaii-born citizen to hold that high office.' ...

"Advocates for placing the library in Chicago speak of Obama's coming of age as a community organizer there and his service in the Illinois Senate and as the state's U.S. senator. They say a presidential library on the city's South Side could revitalize the community and be a force for economic growth. ...

"The emerging consensus in Honolulu is that the state university is best prepared to house the library. But there's no such sense of agreement in Chicago, where a host of groups are publicly stumping on behalf of other sites on Chicago's South Side, where Michelle Obama grew up, voters first sent Barack Obama to public office and the Obama family has their home."